Benedict de Spinoza was among the most important of the post-Cartesian

philosophers who flourished in the second half of the 17th century. He made
significant contributions in virtually every area of philosophy, and his writings
reveal the influence of such divergent sources as Stoicism, Jewish Rationalism,
Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, and a variety of heterodox religious thinkers of
his day. For this reason he is difficult to categorize, though he is usually counted,
along with Descartes and Leibniz, as one of the three major Rationalists. Given
Spinozas devaluation of sense perception as a means of acquiring knowledge,
his description of a purely intellectual form of cognition, and his idealization of
geometry as a model for philosophy, this categorization is fair. But it should not
blind us to the eclecticism of his pursuits, nor to the striking originality of his
thought.

Among philosophers, Spinoza is best known for his Ethics, a monumental work
that presents an ethical vision unfolding out of a monistic metaphysics in which
God and Nature are identified. God is no longer the transcendent creator of the
universe who rules it via providence, but Nature itself, understood as an infinite,
necessary, and fully deterministic system of which humans are a part. Humans
find happiness only through a rational understanding of this system and their
place within it. On account of this and the many other provocative positions he
advocates, Spinoza has remained an enormously controversial figure. For many,
he is the harbinger of enlightened modernity who calls us to live by the guidance
of reason. For others, he is the enemy of the traditions that sustain us and the
denier of what is noble within us. After a review of Spinozas life and works, this
article examines the main themes of his philosophy, primarily as they are set
forth in the Ethics.

Table of Contents

Life and Works

Geometric Method and the Ethics
Metaphysics
Substance Monism
Definitions
Preliminary Propositions
Substance Monism Demonstrated
The Modal System
Natura naturans and Natura naturata
Two Types of Mode
Causal Determinism

Causal Parallelism
Mind and Cognition
The Mind as the Idea of the Body
Imagination
Sense Perception
Inadequate Ideas
Adequate Ideas
Three Kinds of Knowledge
Psychology
Rejection of Free-Will
The Conatus Principle
The Affects
Bondage
Ethics
Freedom from the Passions
Conatus and the Guidance of Reason
Knowledge of God as the Highest Good
Intellectual Love of God and Human Blessedness
Eternity of the Mind
Conclusion
References and Further Reading
Texts and Translations of Spinoza
General Studies Suitable as Introductions
More Advanced and Specialized Studies
Collected Essays on Spinoza
1. Life and Works

Spinoza came into the world a Jew. Born in 1632, he was the son of Marrano
parents. They had immigrated to Amsterdam from Portugal in order to escape
the Inquisition that had spread across the Iberian Peninsula and live in the
relatively tolerant atmosphere of Holland. Spinoza's father, Michael, was a
successful merchant and a respected member of the community. His mother,
Hanna, the second of Michael's three wives, died in 1638, just before Spinoza
was to turn six.

The young Spinoza, given the name Baruch, was educated in his congregation's
academy, the Talmud Torah school. There he received the kind of education that
the community deemed necessary to constitute one as an educated Jew. This
largely consisted of religious study , including instruction in Hebrew, liturgy,
Torah, prophetic writings, and rabbinical commentaries. Although Spinoza no
doubt excelled in these, he did not move on to the higher levels of study which
focused on the Talmud and were typically undertaken by those preparing for the
rabbinate. Whether by desire or by necessity, Spinoza left the school in order to
work in his father's business, which he eventually took over with his half-brother,
Gabriel.

The Jewish community in Amsterdam was by no means a closed one , but

Spinoza's commercial activities put him in touch with more diverse currents of
thought than those to which he had hitherto been exposed. Most significantly, he
came into contact with so-called 'free-thinking' Protestants - dissenters from the
dominant Calvinism who maintained a lively interest in a wide range of
theological issues, as well as in the latest developments in philosophy and
science. This naturally included the work of Descartes, which was regarded by
many in Holland to be the most promising of several alternatives to scholasticism
that had emerged in recent decades. In order to discuss their interests, these
free-thinkers organized themselves into small groups, they called colleges, which
met on a regular basis. Spinoza may have attended such meetings as early as
the first half of the 1650's, and it is most likely here that he received his first
exposure to Cartesian thought.

This is not to say that Spinoza ceased to mine the resources of his own tradition he became steeped, for example, in the writings of such philosophically
important figures as Maimonides and Gersonides - but his intellectual horizons
were expanding and he was experiencing a restlessness that drove him to look
further afield. It was at this time that he placed himself under the tutelage of an
ex-Jesuit, Franciscus Van den Enden, who had recently set up a Latin school in
Amsterdam. Van den Enden turned out to be the perfect teacher for Spinoza. In
addition to having an excellent reputation as a Latinist, he was a medical doctor
who kept abreast of all that was new in the sciences. He was also notorious for
his allegedly irreligious cast of mind, and he was a passionate advocate of
democratic political ideals. It is safe to say that Spinoza's studies with Van den
Enden included more than lessons on how to decline nouns.

Spinoza's intellectual reorientation, however, came at a cost . His increasingly

unorthodox views and, perhaps, laxity in his observance of the Jewish law
strained his relations with the community. Tensions became so great that, in
1656, the elders of the synagogue undertook proceedings to excommunicate
him. Without providing details, the writ of excommunication accuses him of
'abominable heresies' and monstrous deeds. It then levels a series of curses
against him and prohibits others from communicating with him, doing business

with him, reading anything he might write, or even coming into close proximity
with him. Spinoza may still have been a Jew, but he was now an outcast.

Little is known about Spinoza's activities in the years immediately following his
excommunication. He continued his studies with Van den Enden and occasionally
took up residence in his teacher's home. As it was now impossible for him to
carry on in commerce, it was most likely at this time that he took up lens
grinding as an occupation. There is also evidence that he traveled periodically to
Leiden to study at the university. There he would have received formal
instruction in Cartesian philosophy and become familiar with the work of
prominent Dutch Cartesians. In 1661, he settled near Leiden, in the town of
Rijnsburg.

It was during this same period, in the late 1650's, that Spinoza embarked upon
his literary career. His first work, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect,
is an attempt to formulate a philosophical method that would allow the mind to
form the clear and distinct ideas that are necessary for its perfection. It contains,
in addition, reflection upon the various kinds of knowledge, an extended
treatment of definition, and a lengthy analysis of the nature and causes of doubt.
For reasons that are unknown, theTreatise was left unfinished, though it appears
that Spinoza always intended to complete it. Shortly thereafter, while in
Rijnsburg, Spinoza set to work on his Short Treatise on God, Man, and His WellBeing. This work, circulated privately among friends, foreshadows many of the
themes of his mature work, the Ethics. Most notably, it contains an unambiguous
statement of the most famous of Spinoza's theses - the identity of God and
Nature.

Spinoza's stay in Rijnsburg was brief. In 1663 he moved to the town of Voorburg,
not far from The Hague, where he settled into a quiet, but busy, life. At the
behest of friends, he immediately set about preparing for publication a set of
lessons that he had given to a student in Leiden on Descartes'sPrinciples of
Philosophy. The result was the only work that he was to publish under his own
name, now Latinized to Benedict: Ren Descartes's Principles of Philosophy, Parts
I and II, Demonstrated According to the Geometric Method by Benedict de
Spinoza of Amsterdam. As a condition of publication, Spinoza had his friend,
Lodewijk Meyer, write a preface to the work, warning the reader that his aim was
exposition only and that he did not endorse all of Descartes's conclusions. He
also appended a short piece, entitled Metaphysical Thoughts, in which he
sketched some of his own views. Despite his admiration for Descartes, Spinoza
did not want to be seen as a Cartesian.

Spinoza's work on Descartes shows him to have been interested from early on in
the use of geometric method in philosophy. In addition to putting parts of the
Principles into geometric form, he began experimenting with geometric
demonstrations of material taken from his own Short Treatise. It was out of this
experimentation that the idea arose for a fully geometric presentation of his

thought. He began work on this sometime in the early 1660's, and by 1665
substantial portions of what was to become the Ethics were circulating in draft
form among his friends back in Amsterdam. Though he was well into the project
by then, the political and religious climate of the day made Spinoza hesitant to
complete it. He chose to exercise caution and suspended work on it, turning
instead to a book that would prepare an audience receptive to the Ethics. This
was the Theological-Political Treatise, which he completed and published
anonymously in 1670.

Spinoza's aim in the Theological-Political Treatise was to argue that the stability
and security of society is not undermined but, rather, enhanced by freedom of
thought, meaning primarily the freedom to philosophize. As is clear from the
text, he considered the primary threat to this freedom emanated from the clergy,
whom he accused of playing upon the fears and superstitions of people in order
to maintain power. His solution was to divest the clergy of all political power,
even to the point of placing authority over the practice of religion in the hands of
the sovereign. The sovereign, Spinoza argued, should extend broad liberties
within this domain, requiring adherence to no more than a minimal creed that
was neutral with respect to competing sects and the meaning of which was open
to a variety of interpretations. This, he hoped, would allow philosophers the
freedom to do their work unencumbered by the constraints of sectarianism.

As was to be expected, the Theological-Political Treatise was met with a firestorm

of criticism. It was condemned as a work of evil, and its author was accused of
having nefarious intentions in writing it. Even some of Spinoza's closest friends
were deeply unsettled by it. Though he had assiduously tried to avoid it, Spinoza
found himself embroiled in heated religious controversy and saddled with a
reputation for atheism, something he greatly resented.

Spinoza's last move, in 1670, was to The Hague, where he was to live out his
remaining years. Besides having to deal with fallout from his Theological-Political
Treatise, he witnessed a political revolution that culminated in the murder of the
Grand Pensionary of Holland, Jan De Witt, along with his brother, Cornelius, by an
angry mob of Orangist-Calvinists. Spinoza admired De Witt for his liberal policies
and was horrified at the murder. With the ascent of the Orangist-Calvinist faction,
he felt his own situation to be tenuous.

Despite these distractions, Spinoza pressed on. He undertook new projects,

including the writing of a Hebrew grammar, and he turned back to work on the
Ethics. Given the hostility with which theTheological-Political Treatise was met
and the realities of the new political landscape, he must have done so with a
deep sense of pessimism about its chances for success. By 1675 it was
complete. As he perceived his enemies to have grown in influence and
opportunity, however, Spinoza decided against publishing it. Public viewing of
the definitive statement of his philosophy would have to wait until after his
death.

By this time Spinoza was in a state of failing health. Weakened by a respiratory

illness, he devoted the last year of his life to writing a work of political
philosophy, his Political Treatise. Though left unfinished at his death, Spinoza's
intention was to show how governments of all types could be improved and to
argue for the superiority of democracy over other forms of political organization.
Following the lead of Machiavelli and Hobbes, h
is argument was to be non-utopian, based on a realistic assessment of human
nature drawn from the psychological theory set forth in the Ethics. In the part he
did finish, Spinoza showed himself to be an astute analyst of diverse
constitutional forms and an original thinker among liberal social contract
theorists.

Spinoza died peacefully in his rented room in The Hague in 1677. He left no will,
but the manuscripts of his unpublished works - the Treatise on the Emendation of
the Intellect, the Ethics, the Hebrew Grammar, and the Political Treatise - along
with his correspondence were found in in his desk. These were immediately
shipped to Amsterdam for publication, and in short order they appeared in print
as B.D.S. Opus Posthuma. But even in death Spinoza could not escape
controversy; in 1678, these works were banned throughout Holland.

2. Geometric Method and the Ethics

Upon opening Spinoza's masterpiece, the Ethics, one is immediately struck by its
form. It is written in the style of a geometrical treatise, much like Euclid's
Elements, with each book comprising a set of definitions, axioms, propositions,
scholia, and other features that make up the formal apparatus of geometry. One
wonders why Spinoza would have employed this mode of presentation. The effort
it required must have been enormous, and the result is a work that only the most
dedicated of readers can make their way through.

Some of this is explained by the fact that the seventeenth century was a time in
which geometry was enjoying a resurgence of interest and was held in
extraordinarily high esteem, especially within the intellectual circles in which
Spinoza moved. We may add to this the fact that Spinoza, though not a
Cartesian, was an avid student of Descartes's works. As is well known, Descartes
was the leading advocate of the use of geometric method within philosophy, and
his Meditations was written more geometrico, in the geometrical style. In this
respect the Ethics can be said to be Cartesian in inspiration.

While this characterization is true, it needs qualification. The Meditations and the
Ethics are very different works, not just in substance, but also in style. In order to
understand this difference one must take into account the distinction between

two types of geometrical method, the analytic and the synthetic. Descartes
explains this distinction as follows:

Analysis shows the true way by means of which the thing in question was
discovered methodically and as it were a priori, so that if the reader is willing to
follow it and give sufficient attention to all points, he will make the thing his own
and understand it just as perfectly as if he had discovered it for himself. . . . .
Synthesis, by contrast, employs a directly opposite method where the search is,
as it were, a posteriori . . . . It demonstrates the conclusion clearly and employs a
long series of definitions, postulates, axioms, theorems and problems, so that if
anyone denies one of the conclusions it can be shown at once that it is contained
in what has gone before, and hence the reader, however argumentative or
stubborn he may be, is compelled to give his assent. (CSM II,110-111)

The analytic method is the way of discovery. Its aim is to lead the mind to the
apprehension of primary truths that can serve as the foundation of a discipline.
The synthetic method is the way of invention. Its aim is to build up from a set of
primary truths a system of results, each of which is fully established on the basis
of what has come before. As the Meditations is a work whose explicit aim is to
establish the foundations of scientific knowledge, it is appropriate that it employs
the analytic method. The Ethics, however, has another aim, one for which the
synthetic method is appropriate.

As its title indicates, the Ethics is a work of ethical philosophy. Its ultimate aim is
to aid us in the attainment of happiness, which is to be found in the intellectual
love of God. This love, according to Spinoza, arises out of the knowledge that we
gain of the divine essence insofar as we see how the essences of singular things
follow of necessity from it. In view of this, it is easy to see why Spinoza favored
the synthetic method. Beginning with propositions concerning God, he was able
to employ it to show how all other things can be derived from God. In grasping
the order of propositions as they are demonstrated in the Ethics, we thus attain a
kind of knowledge that approximates the knowledge that underwrites human
happiness. We are, as it were, put on the road towards happiness. Of the two
methods it is only the synthetic method that is suitable for this purpose.

3. Metaphysics

Although the Ethics is not principally a work of metaphysics, the system it lays
out stands as one of the great monuments in the tradition of grand metaphysical
speculation. What is perhaps most noteworthy about this system is that it is a
species of monism - the doctrine that all of reality is in some significant sense
one. In Spinoza's case, this is exemplified by the claim that there is one and only
one substance. This substance he identifies as God. While monism has had its

defenders in the west, they have been few and far between. Spinoza is arguably
the greatest among them.

a. Substance Monism

Spinoza builds his case for substance monism in a tightly reasoned argument
that culminates in IP14. We may best follow the course of this argument by
taking it in three parts. First, we examine four definitions that play a crucial role
in the argument. Second, we look at two propositions to which the demonstration
of IP14 appeals. And third, we turn to the demonstration of IP14 itself.

i. Definitions

Among the eight definitions that open Book One of the Ethics, the following four
are most important to the argument for substance monism:

ID3: By substance I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself,

that is, that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing, from
which it must be formed.

This definition has two components. First, a substance is what exists in itself. This
is to say that it is an ultimate metaphysical subject. While other things may exist
as features of a substance, substance does not exist as a feature of anything
else. Second, a substance is what is conceived through itself. This is to say that
the idea of a substance does not involve the idea of any other thing. Substances
are both ontologically and conceptually independent.

ID4: By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as

constituting its essence.

An attribute is not just any property of a substance - it is its very essence. So

close is the association of an attribute and the substance of which it is an
attribute that Spinoza denies that there is a real distinction between them.

ID5: By mode I understand the affections of a substance, or that which is in

another through which it is also conceived.

A mode is what exists in another and is conceived through another. Specifically,

it exists as a modification or an affection of a substance and cannot be conceived

apart from it. In contrast to substances, modes are ontologically and

conceptually dependent.

ID6: By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, that is, a substance

consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and
infinite essence.

God is an infinite substance. By this Spinoza means both that the number of
God's attributes is unlimited and that there is no attribute that God does not
possess. As we make our way through the Ethics, we learn that only two of these
attributes can be known by the human mind. These are thought and extension.

ii. Preliminary Propositions

Spinoza moves from these definitions to demonstrate a series of propositions

concerning substance in general and God in particular on the basis of which he
will demonstrate that God is the one and only substance. The following two
propositions are landmarks in the overall argument and are explicitly invoked in
the demonstration of IP14:

IP5: In Nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or
attribute.

In support of this proposition, Spinoza argues that if two or more substances

were to exist they would be differentiated either by a difference in modes or by a
difference in attributes. However, they could not be differentiated by a difference
in modes, for substances are prior in nature to their modes. Thus, they would
have to be differentiated by a difference in attributes. Controversially, Spinoza
takes this to entail that no two substances can have exactly the same set of
attributes, nor can they have a common attribute. Substances must be entirely
dissimilar to one another.

IP11: God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which

expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists.

In support of this proposition, Spinoza offers a variant of the so-called Ontological

Argument. The basic consideration upon which this variant rests is that it
pertains to the nature of substance to exist. Spinoza establishes this earlier, in
IP7, by appealing to the fact that substances, being entirely dissimilar to one
another, cannot produce one another. Since nothing else can produce a
substance, substances must be self-caused, which is to say that it pertains to the

nature of substance to exist. To imagine that God does not exist is thus absurd.
As a substance consisting of infinite attributes, it pertains to the divine nature to
exist.

iii. Substance Monism Demonstrated

With these propositions in place, Spinoza has everything he needs to

demonstrate that there is one and only one substance and that this substance is
God:

IP14: Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.

The demonstration of this proposition is exceedingly simple. God exists (by IP11).
Since God possesses every attribute (by ID6), if any substance other than God
were to exist, it would possess an attribute in common with God. But, since there
cannot be two or more substances with a common attribute (by IP5), there can
be no substance other than God. God is the one and only substance.

The implications of this proposition are startling, and Spinoza can be seen to be
working them out through the remainder of the Ethics. Most obviously, this
proposition marks a break with the substance pluralism advocated by the
majority of philosophers in the west. Even Descartes, from whom Spinoza
learned much in the area of metaphysics, posited a plurality of mental and
physical substances, along with God, whom he regarded as the paradigm of a
substance. More importantly, it signals a rejection of classical theism, the idea
that God is the creator of the universe who remains ontologically distinct from it
and governs it according to his sovereign will. Spinoza has nothing but scorn for
this idea and dismisses it as a product of the imagination. How it is that he
reconceptualizes the relation between God, the infinite substance, and the order
of finite things, becomes clear only as we turn to his account of the modal
system.

b. The Modal System

In line with his rejection of classical theism, Spinoza famously identifies God with
Nature. Nature is no longer seen as a power that is distinct from and subordinate
to God, but as a power that is one and the same with divine power. Spinoza's
phrase 'Deus sive Natura (God or Nature) captures this identification and is
justly celebrated as a succinct expression of his metaphysics. In isolation,
however, the phrase is relatively uninformative. It tells us nothing about how
Spinoza, having rejected the creator/creation relation posited by the classical
model, conceives of the relation between God and the system of modes.

i. Natura naturans and Natura naturata

To fill out his thoughts on this matter, Spinoza distinguishes between Nature
taken in its active or productive aspect, which he identifies with God or the divine
attributes, and Nature taken in its derivative or produced aspect, which he
identifies with the system of modes. The former he calls Natura
naturans(literally: Nature naturing) and the latter he calls Natura naturata
(literally: Natura natured). Spinoza's use of these formulas is revealing in two
respects. First, his double employment of 'Natura' signals the ontological unity
that exists between God and the system of modes. Each mode within the system
is a modification of nothing other than the very substance that is God. Second,
his employment of the active 'naturans' in the first and the passive 'naturata' in
the second signals a causal relation between God and the modal system. God is
not merely the subject of modes; he is an active power that produces and
sustains them.

In view of the ontological unity that exists between God and the modal system,
Spinoza is careful to specify that the divine causality is immanent rather that
transitive. What this means is that God's causal activity does not pass outside of
the divine substance to produce external effects, as it would if God were a
creator in the traditional sense. Rather, it remains wholly within the divine
substance to produce the multitude of modes that constitute the modal system.
Spinoza likens this to the way in which the nature of a triangle is productive of its
own essential properties: "From God's supreme power, or infinite nature,
infinitely many things in infinitely many modes, that is, all things, have
necessarily flowed, or always follow, by the same necessity and in the same way
as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity and to eternity, that its
three angles are equal to two right angles" (IP17S1). The entire modal system,
Natura naturata, follows immanently from the divine nature, Natura naturans.

ii. Two Types of Mode

Into this relatively simple picture, Spinoza introduces a complication. There are,
he says, two types of mode. The first consists in what he calls infinite and eternal
modes. These are pervasive features of the universe, each of which follows from
the divine nature insofar as it follows from the absolute nature of one or another
of God's attributes. Examples include motion and rest under the attribute of
extension and infinite intellect under the attribute of thought. The second
consists in what may be called finite and temporal modes, which are simply the
singular things that populate the universe. Modes of this type follow from the
divine nature as well, but do so only as each follows from one or another of God's
attributes insofar as it is modified by a modification that is itself finite and
temporal. Examples include individual bodies under the attribute of extension
and individual ideas under the attribute of thought.

Unfortunately, Spinoza does little to explain either what these infinite and eternal
modes are or what relation they have to finite and temporal modes. Taking their
cue from a statement in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect that the
laws of nature are embedded in the infinite and eternal modes, many
commentators have suggested that Spinoza thought of these modes as
governing the manner in which finite modes affect one another. For example, if
laws of impact are somehow embedded in the infinite and eternal mode motion
and rest, then the outcome of any particular collision will be determined by that
mode together with the relevant properties (speed, direction, size, etc) of the
bodies involved. If this is correct, then Spinoza envisions every finite mode to be
fully determined by intersecting lines of causality: a horizontal line that stretches
back through the series of antecedent finite modes and a vertical line that moves
up through the series of infinite modes and terminates in one or another of the
attributes of God.

iii. Causal Determinism

However it may be that Spinoza ultimately conceives of the relation between

infinite and finite modes, he is clear about one thing - the system of modes is an
entirely deterministic system in which everything is fully determined to be and to
act:

IP29: In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined
from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain
way.

Spinoza reminds us that God's existence is necessary. It pertains to the very

nature of substance to exist. Furthermore, since each and every mode follows
from the necessity of the divine nature, either from the absolute nature of one or
another of God's attributes, as is the case with the infinite and eternal modes, or
from one or another of God's attributes insofar as it is modified by a modification
that is finite, as is the case with the finite modes, they are all necessary as well.
Since there is nothing other than the divine substance and its modes, there is
nothing that is contingent. Any appearance of contingency is the result of a
defect in knowledge, either of God or of the order of causes. Accordingly, Spinoza
makes it central to his theory of knowledge that to know a thing adequately is to
know it in its necessity, as it has been fully determined by its causes.

iv. Causal Parallelism

An obvious question to ask at this point is whether it is possible for finite modes
falling under one attribute to act upon and determine finite modes falling under

another attribute. Spinoza's answer is an unambiguous no. Causal relations exist

only among modes falling under the same attribute. His explanation for this may
be traced back to an axiom set forth at the beginning of Book One:

IA4: The knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its
cause.

Given this axiom, if a finite mode falling under one attribute were to have God as
its cause insofar as he is considered under a different attribute, i.e., if it were to
be caused by a finite mode falling under a different attribute, then the
knowledge of that mode would involve the knowledge of that other attribute.
Since it does not, that mode cannot have God as its cause insofar as he is
considered under some other attribute. In other words, it cannot be caused by a
finite mode falling under some other attribute.

When applied to modes falling under those attributes of which we have

knowledge - thought and extension this has an enormously important
consequence. There can be no causal interaction between ideas and bodies. This
does not mean that ideas and bodies are unrelated to one another. Indeed, it is
one of the best-known theses in the Ethics that the lines of causation that run
among them are strictly parallel:

IIP7: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection
of things.

In the demonstration of this proposition Spinoza says that it is a consequence of

IA4 and leaves it at that. Nevertheless, it is apparent that this proposition has
deep foundations in his substance monism. As thought and extension are not
attributes of distinct substances, so ideas and bodies are not modes of distinct
substances. They are "one and the same thing, but expressed two ways" (IIP7S).
If ideas and bodies are one and the same thing, however, their order and
connection must be the same. The doctrine of substance monism in this way
insures that ideas and bodies, though causally independent, are causally parallel.

4. Mind and Cognition

It is at this point that Spinoza's metaphysics touches upon his theory of mind and
yields some of its most profound consequences. Most obviously, substance
monism prohibits him from affirming the kind of dualism that Descartes affirmed,
one in which mind and body are conceived as distinct substances. What is more,
his contention that modes falling under different attributes have no causal
interaction but are causally parallel to one another prohibits him from affirming

that mind and body interact. Because he takes seriously the reality of the mental
while rejecting dualism and eliminating interaction, Spinoza's views on the mind
are generally given a sympathetic hearing in a way that Descartes's views are
not.

a. The Mind as the Idea of the Body

To understand Spinoza's account of the mind we must begin with IIP7. This
proposition, together with its scholium, commits him to the thesis that for each
finite mode of extension there exists a finite mode of thought that corresponds to
it and from which it is not really distinct. More elaborately, it commits him to the
thesis that (1) for each simple body there exists a simple idea that corresponds
to it and from which it is not really distinct and (2) for each composite body there
exists a composite idea that corresponds to it and from which it is not really
distinct, composed, as it were, of ideas corresponding to each of the bodies of
which the composite body is composed. Spinoza counts all of these ideas,
whether simple or composite, as minds. In this respect he does not consider the
human mind to be unique. It is simply the idea that corresponds to the human
body.

In taking this position, Spinoza does not mean to imply that all minds are alike.
As minds are expressions of the bodies to which they correspond in the domain
of thought, some have abilities that others do not. Simply put, the greater the
capacity of a body for acting and being acted upon, the greater the capacity of
the mind that corresponds to it for perception. Spinoza elaborates:

[I]n proportion as a body is more capable than others of doing many things at
once, or being acted on in many ways at once, so its mind is more capable than
others of perceiving many things at once. And in proportion as the actions of a
body depend more on itself alone, and as other bodies concur with it less in
acting, so its mind is more capable of understanding distinctly. And from these
[truths] we know the excellence of one mind over the others. (IIP13S)

Herein lies the explanation of the excellence of the human mind. The human
body, as a highly complex composite of many simple bodies, is able to act and
be acted upon in myriad ways that other bodies cannot. The human mind, as an
expression of that body in the domain of thought, mirrors the body in being a
highly complex composite of many simple ideas and is thus possessed of
perceptual capacities exceeding those of other, non-human minds. Only a mind
that corresponds to a body of complexity comparable to that of the human body
can have perceptual abilities comparable to those of the human mind.

b. Imagination

A perceptual ability that is of particular interest to Spinoza is imagination. This he

takes to be a general capacity of representing external bodies as present,
whether they are actually present or not. Imagination thus includes more than
the capacity to form those mental constructs that we normally consider to be
imaginative. It includes memory and sense perception as well. Since it is clearly
impossible to get around in the world without this, Spinoza concedes that it is "in
this way [that] I know almost all the things that are useful in life" (TIE 22).

That being said, Spinoza consistently opposes imagination to intellect and views
it as providing no more than confused perception. To use his preferred
terminology, the ideas of the imagination are inadequate. They may be essential
for getting around in the world, but they give us a distorted and incomplete
picture of the things in it. To understand why, it is useful to begin with sense
perception. This is the most important form of imaginative perception, and it is
from this form that all others derive.

i. Sense Perception

On Spinoza's account, sense perception has its origin in the action of an external
body upon one or another of the sensory organs of one's own body. From this
there arises a complex series of changes in what amounts to the bodys nervous
system. As the mind is the idea of the body, it will represent these changes. This,
Spinoza contends, is what constitutes sense perception.

In order to explain how this act of representation yields perception of an external

body, Spinoza appeals to the fact that the changed state of one's body is a
function both of the nature of ones body and the nature of the external body
that caused that state. Because of this, the mind's representation of that state
will express something more than the nature of one's own body. It will express
the nature of the external body as well:

IIP16: The idea of any mode in which the human body is affected by external
bodies must involve the nature of the human body and at the same time the
nature of the external body.

It is this feature of the mind's act of representation - that it expresses the nature
of an external body that explains how such an act constitutes sense perception.

c. Inadequate Ideas

In view of this it is not difficult to see why Spinoza judges sense perception to be
inadequate. Grounded as it is in the mind's representation of the state of ones
own body rather than in the direct representation of external bodies, sense
perception is indirect. Since this goes for all imaginative ideas, the problem with
them all is the same:

IIP16C2: It follows, second, that the ideas which we have of external bodies
indicate the condition of our own body more than the nature of the external
bodies.

It is because of this that Spinoza refers to the ideas of the imagination as

confused. The vision they give of external bodies is unavoidably colored, so to
speak, by the lens of one's own body.

Confusion, however, is just one aspect of the inadequacy of imaginative ideas.

Such ideas are also mutilated. The reason for this lies in IA4, which states that
the knowledge of an effect depends upon and involves the knowledge of its
causes. This is a condition that imaginative ideas can never satisfy. The mind
may contain the idea of an external body, but it cannot contain ideas of all of the
causes of that body. These, being infinite, fall outside of its scope and are fully
contained only in God's infinite intellect. Gods ideas of bodies may be adequate,
but ours are not. They are cut off from those ideas that are necessary in order to
render them adequate.

d. Adequate Ideas

Although imaginative ideas of external bodies are the most important examples
of inadequate ideas, they are not the only examples. Spinoza goes on to show
that the mind's ideas of the body, its duration, and its parts are all inadequate.
So too is the mind's idea of itself. Even so, he remains optimistic about the
possibility of adequate ideas.

This optimism becomes evident as Spinoza shifts his attention from imaginative
ideas of singular things to intellectual ideas of common things. These common
things are things that are either common to all bodies or common to the human
body and certain bodies by which the human body is regularly affected. Spinoza
tells us little else about these common things, except to say that they are fully
present in the whole and in each of the parts of every body in which they are
present. Nevertheless, it is fairly certain that the class of things common to all
bodies includes the attribute of extension and the infinite and eternal mode of
motion and rest. What is included in the class of things common to the human
body and those bodies by which the human body is regularly affected is not so

certain. Whatever they turn out to be, however, Spinoza assures us that our
ideas of them can only be adequate.

To see why, consider some thing, A, that is common to the human body and
some body by which the human body is affected. A, Spinoza contends, will be
fully present in the affection that arises in the human body as a result of the
action of the external body, just as it is in the two bodies themselves. As a result,
the mind, in possessing the idea of that affection, not only will have the idea of
A, but its idea will be neither confused nor mutilated. The mind's idea of A will be
adequate.

This result is of utmost importance. Because any idea that follows from an
adequate idea is itself adequate, these ideas, appropriately called common
notions, can serve as axioms in a deductive system. When working out this
system, the mind engages in a fundamentally different kind of cognition than
when it engages in any of the various forms of imaginative perception. In all
forms of imaginative perception the order of ideas mirrors the order of bodily
affections, and this order, depending as it does upon the chance encounters of
the body with external bodies, is entirely fortuitous. By contrast, the derivation of
adequate ideas from common notions within a deductive system follows a wholly
different order. This Spinoza calls the order of reason. The paradigm case is
geometry.

e. Three Kinds of Knowledge

With this distinction between adequate and inadequate perception in place,

Spinoza introduces a set of further distinctions. He begins with inadequate
perception, which he now calls knowledge of the first kind, and divides it into two
parts. The first consists of knowledge from random experience (experientia
vaga). This is knowledge "from singular things which have been represented to
us through the senses in a way which is mutilated, confused, and without order
for the intellect"(P40S2). The second consists of knowledge from signs (ex
signis), "for example, from the fact that, having heard or read certain words, we
recollect things, and form certain ideas of them, like those through which we
imagine the things"(P40S2). What links both of these forms of knowledge is that
they lack a rational order. It is obvious that knowledge from random experience
follows the order of the affections of the human body, but so does knowledge
from signs. A Roman who hears the word 'pomum', for instance, will think of an
apple, not because there is any rational connection between the word and the
object, but only because they have been associated in his or her experience.

When we reach what Spinoza calls the second kind of knowledge, reason (ratio),
we have ascended from an inadequate to an adequate perception of things. This
type of knowledge is gained "from the fact that we have common notions and

adequate ideas of the properties of things" (P40S2). What Spinoza has in mind
here is what was just indicated, namely, the formation of adequate ideas of the
common properties of things and the movement by way of deductive inference
to the formation of adequate ideas of other common properties. Unlike in the
case of knowledge of the first kind, this order of ideas is rational.

We might think that in attaining this second kind of knowledge we have attained
all that is available to us. However, Spinoza adds a third type, which he regards
as superior. He calls this intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva) and tells us that
it "proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of
God to the adequate knowledge of the [formal] essence of things"(P40S2).
Unfortunately, Spinoza is once again obscure at a crucial junction, and it is
difficult to know what he has in mind here. He seems to be envisioning a type of
knowledge that gives insight into the essence of some singular thing together
with an understanding of how that essence follows of necessity from the essence
of God. Furthermore, the characterization of this kind of knowledge as intuitive
indicates that the connection between the individual essence and the essence of
God is grasped in a single act of apprehension and is not arrived at by any kind
of deductive process. How this is possible is never explained.

Problems of obscurity aside, we can still see something of the ideal at which
Spinoza is aiming. Inadequate ideas are incomplete. Through them we perceive
things without perceiving the causes that determine them to be, and it is for this
reason that we imagine them to be contingent. What Spinoza is offering with the
third kind of knowledge is a way of correcting this. It is important to note,
however, that he is not proposing that we can have this knowledge with respect
to the durational existence of any particular item. As we have already seen, this
would require having ideas of all of the temporal causes of a thing, which are
infinite. Rather, he is proposing that we can have it with respect to the essence
of a singular thing as it follows from the essence of God. To have this kind of
knowledge is to understand the thing as necessary rather than contingent. It is,
to use Spinoza's famous phrase, to regard it sub quadam specie aeternitatis,
under a certain aspect of eternity.

5. Psychology

One of the most interesting but understudied areas of Spinoza's thought is his
psychology, the centerpiece of which is his theory of the affects. Spinoza, of
course, was not the first philosopher to take an interest in the affects. He had
only to look to the work of Descartes and Hobbes in the previous generation and
to the work of the Stoics before them to find sustained discussions of the topic.
His own work shows that he learned much from these thinkers.

Despite his debts, Spinoza expressed deep dissatisfaction with the views of those
who had preceded him. His dissatisfaction reflects the naturalistic orientation
that he wished to bring to the subject:

Most of those who have written about the affects, and men's way of living, seem
to treat, not of natural things, which follow the common laws of Nature, but of
things which are outside Nature. Indeed they seem to conceive man in Nature as
a dominion within a dominion. For they believe that man disturbs, rather than
follows, the order of Nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and
that he is determined only by himself. (III Preface)

In opposition to what he saw as a tendency on the part of previous philosophers

to treat humans as exceptions to the natural order, Spinoza proposes to treat
them as subject to the same laws and causal determinants as everything else.
What emerges can best be described as a mechanistic theory of the affects.

a. Rejection of Free-Will

In working out this new perspective, the first thing on Spinoza's agenda is to
clear away what he sees as the most pervasive confusion that we as humans
have about ourselves. This is the belief in free-will. Spinoza has nothing but scorn
for this belief and treats it as a delusion that arises from the fact that the ideas
we have of our actions are inadequate. "[M]en believe themselves to be free," he
writes, because they are conscious of their own actions and are ignorant of the
causes by which they are determined" (IIIP2S). If we were to acquire adequate
ideas of our actions, since these would carry with them knowledge of their
causes, we would immediately see this belief as the delusion that it is.

Spinoza's position on this matter is quite obviously dictated by the determinism

of his metaphysics. The mind, as a finite mode, is fully determined to be and to
act by other finite modes. To posit a faculty of will by which it is made
autonomous and independent of external causal determinants is to remove it
from nature. Spinoza will have none of this. As it is fully part of nature, the mind
must be understood according to the same principles that govern all modes.

b. The Conatus Principle

The first and most important of these principles is what has come to be known as
the Conatus Principle:

IIIP6: Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in being.

The correct interpretation of this principle is far from clear, but it appears to posit
a kind of existential inertia within modes. Each mode, to the extent of its power,
so acts as to resist the destruction or diminution of its being. Spinoza expresses
this by saying that each mode has an innate striving (conatus) to persevere in
being. This striving is so central to what a mode is that he identifies it as a
mode's very essence:

IIIP7: The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing
but the actual essence of the thing.

Though a bit mysterious as to what it means to say that the striving of a mode is
its essence, this identification will play a key role in Spinoza's ethical theory.
Among other things, it will provide the basis upon which he can determine what
is involved in living by the guidance of reason.

c. The Affects

Spinoza begins his account of the affects with those that result from the action of
external causes upon the mind. These are the passive affects, or passions. He
identifies three as primary - joy, sadness, and desire and characterizes all
others as involving a combination of one or more of these together with some
kind of cognitive state. Love and hate, for example, are joy and sadness coupled
with an awareness of their respective causes. Longing, for example, is desire
coupled with a memory of the desired object and an awareness of its absence.
All remaining passions are characterized in a similar fashion.

Although joy, sadness, and desire are primitive, they are each defined in relation
to the mind's striving for perseverance. Joy is that affect by which the mind
passes to a greater perfection, understood as an increased power of striving.
Sadness is that affect by which the mind passes to a lesser perfection,
understood as a decreased power of striving. And desire is the striving for
perseverance itself insofar as the mind is conscious of it. Because all passions
are derived from these primary affects, the entire passional life of the mind is
thus defined in relation to the striving for perseverance.

This may seem paradoxical. Insofar as the mind strives to persevere in being it
would appear to be active rather than passive. This is true, but we must realize
that the mind strives both insofar as it has adequate ideas and insofar as it has
inadequate ideas. The passions are defined only in relation to the mind's striving
insofar as it has inadequate ideas. In fact, the passions are themselves a species
of inadequate ideas. And since all inadequate ideas are caused from without, so

too are the passions. It is in this respect that they must be considered to be
passive rather than active.

This, however, is not the case with those affects that are defined in relation to
the mind's striving insofar as it has adequate ideas. All such affects, being
themselves a species of adequate ideas, are active. Mirroring his analysis of the
passions, Spinoza takes two of these as primitive - active joy and active desire
and treats the remainder as derivative. (He does not acknowledge the possibility
of an active form of sadness, since the diminishment of the mind's perfection,
which is what is involved in sadness, can only occur through the action of
external causes.) In doing so, he posits an element within the affective life that is
not only active, but, because it is grounded in the mind's striving insofar as it has
adequate ideas, is fully rational. It is a central concern of Spinoza's ethical
program to maximize this element.

d. Bondage

That Spinoza would wish to maximize the active affects is understandable in light
of his characterization of life led under the sway of the passions. Such a life is
one in which the individual exercises little effective self-control and is buffeted by
external circumstances in ways that are largely random. "The man who is subject
to the [passive] affects," Spinoza writes, "is under the control, not of himself, but
of fortune, in whose power he so greatly is that often, though he sees the better
for himself, he is still forced to follow the worse" (IV Preface). Life under the sway
of the passions is a life of bondage.

Unfortunately, the extent to which we can extricate ourselves from the sway of
the passions is limited. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the mind is
a mode of limited power, yet it is inserted into an order of nature in which there
exists an infinite number of modes whose power surpasses its own. To think that
the mind can exist unaffected within this order is to assume, falsely, that it is
endowed with infinite power or that nothing in nature acts upon it. The second,
which is a specification of the first, is that an affect is not restrained merely
because it is opposed by reason. It must be opposed by an affect that is stronger
than it. The trouble is that reason often lacks this affective power. This is because
the strength of the active affects, which pertain to reason, is a function of the
strength of the mind alone, whereas the strength of the passive affects, the
passions, is a function of the strength of their external causes, which in many
cases is greater. In such cases reason is unable to overrule passion and is
impotent as a guide. "With this," Spinoza concludes, I have shown the cause
why men are moved more by opinion than by true reason, and why the true
knowledge of good and evil arouses disturbances of the mind, and often yields to
lust of every kind" (IV17S). Such is the life of bondage.

6. Ethics

It is from this rather pessimistic diagnosis of the human condition that Spinoza's
ethical theory takes off. In view of this, it is not at all surprising that his ethics is
largely one of liberation, a liberation that is directly tied to the cultivation of
reason. In this respect, Spinoza's ethical orientation is much more akin to that of
the ancients than to that of his fellow moderns. Like the ancients, he sought not
so much to analyze the nature and source of moral duty as to describe the ideal
human life. This is the life that is lived by the so-called 'free-man'. It is a life of
one who lives by the guidance of reason rather than under the sway of the
passions.

a. Freedom from the Passions

In the opening propositions of Book Five, Spinoza lists a number of respects in

which the mind, despite its condition of bondage, is able to weaken the hold that
the passions have over it. Generally speaking, it is able to do this insofar as it
acquires adequate ideas. This, Spinoza tells us, is due to the fact that "the power
of the mind is defined by knowledge alone, whereas lack of power, or passion, is
judged solely by the privation of knowledge, that is, by that through which ideas
are called inadequate" (VP20S). Two examples illustrate this liberating power of
adequate ideas.

First, Spinoza claims that the mind is able to form adequate ideas of its affects. It
can thus form adequate ideas of the passions, which are themselves inadequate
ideas. Since there is no real distinction between an idea and the idea of that
idea, those passions of which the mind forms adequate ideas are thereby
dissolved.

Second, the effect of a thing upon the mind is lessened to the extent that it is
understood to be necessary rather than contingent. We tend, for example, to be
saddened less by the loss of a good when we understand that its loss was
inevitable. Similarly, we tend to be angered less by another person's actions
when we understand that he or she could not have done otherwise. Since
adequate ideas present things as necessary rather than as contingent, the
acquisition of such ideas thereby lessens their effect upon the mind.

As these examples illustrate, the mind's power over the passions is a function of
the adequate ideas that it possess. Liberation lies in the acquisition of
knowledge, which empowers the mind and renders it less susceptible to external
circumstances. In taking this position, Spinoza places himself in a long tradition
that stretches back to the Stoics and ultimately to Socrates.

b. Conatus and the Guidance of Reason

Spinoza tells us that the model human life - the life lived by the 'free-man' is
one that is lived by the guidance of reason rather than under the sway of the
passions. This tells us very little, however, unless we know what it is that reason
prescribes. In order to make this determination, Spinoza falls back upon the
mind's striving for perseverance:

Since reason demands nothing contrary to Nature, it demands that everyone

love himself, seek his own advantage, what is really useful to him, want what will
really lead a man to greater perfection, and absolutely, that everyone should
strive to preserve his own being as far as he can. This, indeed, is as necessarily
true as that the whole is greater than its part. (IVP18S)

Reason's prescription is egoistic. We are to act in accordance with our nature. But
since our nature is identical to our striving to persevere in being, reason
prescribes that we do whatever is to our advantage and seek whatever aids us in
our striving. To act this way, Spinoza insists, is to act virtuously.

This does not mean that in living by the guidance of reason we necessarily place
ourselves at odds with others. Reason prescribes that individuals seek whatever
aids in the striving for perseverance. But since the goods that are necessary in
order to persevere in being are attainable only within the context of social life,
reason dictates that we act in ways that are conducive to the stability and
harmony of society. Spinoza goes so far as to say that in a society in which
everyone lives by the guidance of reason, there would be no need of political
authority to restrict action. It is only insofar as individuals live under the sway of
the passions that they come into conflict with one another and are in need of
political authority. Those who live by the guidance of reason understand this and
recognize that authority as legitimate.

c. Knowledge of God as the Highest Good

Spinoza's contention that those who live by the guidance of reason will naturally
live in harmony with one another receives some support from his view of the
highest good for a human. This is the knowledge of God. Since this knowledge
can be possessed equally by all who seek it, it can be sought by all without
drawing any into conflict.

To establish that the knowledge of God is the highest good, Spinoza again
appeals to the fact that the mind's striving is its essence. Since what follows from

the mind's essence alone are adequate ideas, this allows him to construe the
mind's striving as a striving for adequate ideas. It is a striving for understanding:

IVP26: What we strive for from reason is nothing but understanding; nor does the
mind, insofar as it uses reason, judge anything else useful to itself except what
leads to understanding.

From here it is but an easy step to show that the knowledge of God is the mind's
greatest good. As an infinite substance, God is the greatest thing that can be
conceived. Moreover, since everything other than God is a mode of God, and
since modes can neither be nor be conceived without the substance of which
they are modes, nothing else can be or be conceived apart from God. Spinoza
concludes:

IVP28: Knowledge of God is the mind's greatest good: its greatest virtue is to
know God.

The knowledge of God is the fulfillment of the mind's striving to persevere in

being.

d. Intellectual Love of God and Human Blessedness

In elaborating this thesis, Spinoza specifies this knowledge as knowledge of the

third kind. This is the knowledge that proceeds from the adequate idea of one or
another of God's attributes to the adequate idea of the formal essence of some
singular thing that follows from that attribute. When we possess knowledge of
the third kind, we possess adequate perception of God's essence considered not
only in itself, but as the immanent causal power of the particular modifications to
which it is subject. Knowledge of the first kind, because it is inadequate, and
knowledge of the second kind, because it is restricted to the common properties
of things, both fail to give us this.

In attaining the third kind of knowledge the mind passes to the highest state of
perfection that is available to it. As a result, it experiences active joy to the
greatest possible degree. More importantly, since it is by this kind of knowledge
that the mind understands God to be the cause of its own perfection, it gives rise
to an active love for God as well. This Spinoza refers to as the intellectual love of
God. It is the affective correlate to the third kind of knowledge.

The intellectual love of God turns out to have a great many unique properties.
Among other things, it is entirely constant, it has no contraries, and it is the very

love by which God loves himself. Most significantly, it constitutes the blessedness
of the one who possesses it. When such a love dominates one's affective life, one
attains the serenity and freedom from passion that is the mark of wisdom.
Spinoza thus writes of the person who has attained this love that he "is hardly
troubled in spirit, but being, by a certain eternal necessity, conscious of himself,
and of God, and of things, he never ceases to be, but always possess true peace
of mind" (VP42S). This is human blessedness.

e. Eternity of the Mind

Spinoza's comment that a person who has attained the intellectual love of God
"never ceases to be" is perplexing to say the least. It signals a commitment to
the view that in some fashion or another the mind, or some part of it, survives
the death of the body:

VP23: The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but
something of it remains which is eternal.

At first sight, this appears to be in violation of Spinoza's anti-dualist contention

that mind and body are one and the same thing conceived under two different
attributes. On the basis of this contention, one would expect him to reject the
survival of the mind in any fashion. That he asserts it instead has understandably
been a source of great controversy among his commentators.

At least some of the problem can be cleared away by taking account of a crucial
distinction that Spinoza makes between the existence of the body and its
essence. The existence of the body is its actual duration through time. This
involves its coming to be, the changes it undergoes within its environment, and
its eventual destruction. By contrast, the essence of the body is non-durational.
It is grounded in the timeless essence of God, specifically as one among the
innumerable particular ways of being extended.

The importance of this distinction lies in the fact that, by appealing to the
parallelism doctrine, Spinoza can conclude that there is a corresponding
distinction with respect to the mind. There is an aspect of the mind that is the
expression of the existence of the body, and there is an aspect of the mind that
is the expression of the essence of the body. Spinoza readily concedes that the
aspect of the mind that expresses the existence of the body cannot survive the
destruction of the body. It is destroyed with the destruction of the body. Such,
however, is not the fate of the aspect of the mind that expresses the essence of
the body. Like its object, this aspect of the mind is non-durational. Since only
what is durational ceases to be, this aspect of the mind is unaffected by the
destruction of the body. It is eternal.

Here we must be careful not to misunderstand what Spinoza is saying. In

particular, we should not take him to be offering anything approaching a fullblooded doctrine of personal immortality. In fact, he dismisses the belief in
personal immortality as arising from confusion: "If we attend to the common
opinion of men, we shall see that they are indeed conscious of the eternity of
their mind, but that they confuse it with duration, and attribute it to the
imagination, or memory, which they believe remains after death" (VP34S).
Individuals have some awareness of the eternity of their own minds. But they
mistakenly believe that this eternity pertains to the durational aspect of the
mind, the imagination. As it is the imagination, inclusive of memory, that
constitutes one's unique identity as a person, the belief in personal immortality is
similarly mistaken.

None of this is to say that Spinoza's doctrine of the eternity of the mind has no
relevance to ethics. Although the imagination is not eternal, the intellect is. And
since the intellect is constituted by the mind's store of adequate ideas, the mind
is eternal precisely to the extent that it has these ideas. As a consequence, a
person whose mind is constituted largely by adequate ideas participates more
fully in eternity than a person whose mind is constituted largely by inadequate
ideas. So, while Spinoza offers us no hope of personal immortality, we may take
consolation in the fact that "death is less harmful to us, the greater the mind's
clear and distinct knowledge, and hence, the more the mind loves God" (VP38S).

f. Conclusion

Spinoza does not pretend that any of this is easy. The acquisition of adequate
ideas, especially those by which we attain knowledge of the third kind, is difficult,
and we can never completely escape the influence of the passions. Nevertheless,
Spinoza holds out to those who make the effort the promise, not of personal
immortality, but of participation in eternity within this life. He closes the Ethics
with these words:

If the way I have shown to lead to these things now seems very hard, still, it can
be found. And of course, what is found so rarely must be hard. For if salvation
were at hand, and could be found without great effort, how could nearly
everyone neglect it? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
(VP42S)

7. References and Further Reading

All passages from the texts of Spinoza are taken from the translations appearing
in The Collected Works of Spinoza. Vol.I. Edited and translated by Edwin Curley.

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). Passages from the Ethics are cited
according to Book (I - V), Definition (D), Axiom (A), Proposition (P), Corollary (C),
and Scholium (S). (IVP13S) refers to Ethics, Book IV, Proposition 13, Scholium.
Passages from the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect are cited according
to paragraph number. (TIE 35) refers to Treatise on the Emendation of the
Intellect, paragraph 35.

All passages from the texts of Descartes are taken from the translations
appearing in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. 2 Vols. Edited and
translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff & Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985). Passages are cited according to volume and
page number. (CSM II,23) refers to Cottingham, Stoothoff & Murdoch, Volume II,
page 23.

a. Texts and Translations of Spinoza

Spinoza Opera. 4 Vols. Edited by Carl Gebhart. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925).
Standard critical edition of Spinoza's writings and correspondence in Latin and
Dutch.
The Collected Works of Spinoza. Vol. I. Edited and translated by Edwin Curley.
(Princeton University Press, 1985).
First of two volumes (the second is not yet complete) in what, when complete,
will become the standard translation into English of Spinoza's writings and
correspondence.
A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Edited and translated by Edwin
Curley. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
Useful reader that contains the entire text of the Ethics, as well as substantial
selections from the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, the Short
Treatise, and theTheological-Political Treatise. Also contains helpful selections
from Spinoza's correspondence.
Baruch Spinoza: The Complete Works. Edited by Michael L. Morgan and
translated by Samuel Shirley. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002).
Only modern translation into English of Spinoza's complete works, including his
correspondence.
b. General Studies Suitable as Introductions

Allison, Henry. Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1987).
Curley, Edwin. Behind the Geometrical Method. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1988).

Lloyd, Genevieve. Spinoza and the "Ethics". (London: Routledge, 1996).

Hampshire, Stuart. Spinoza. (London: Penguin, 1951).
Steinberg, Diane, On Spinoza. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000).
c. More Advanced and Specialized Studies

Bennett, Jonathan. A Study of Spinoza's "Ethics". (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984).

De Dijn, Herman. Spinoza: The Way to Wisdom. (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue
University Press, 1996).
Della Rocca, Michael. Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Donagan, Alan. Spinoza. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Curley,
Edwin. Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation. (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1969).
Delahunty, R.J. Spinoza. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).
Lloyd, Genevieve, Part of Nature: Self-Knowledge in Spinoza's Ethics. (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1994).
Mark, Thomas Carson. Spinoza's Theory of Truth. (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1972).
Mason, Richard. The God of Spinoza: A Philosophical Study. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Nadler, Steven. Spinoza: A Life. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Nadler, Steven. Spinoza's Heresy. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Wolfson, Harry Austryn. The Philosophy of Spinoza. 2 Vols. (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1934).
Woolhouse, R.S. Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The Concept of Substance in
Seventeenth Century Metaphysics. (London: Routledge, 1993).
Yovel, Yrmiyahu, Spinoza and Other Heretics. Vol.I: The Marrano of Reason; Vol.II:
The Adventures of Immanence. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
d. Collected Essays on Spinoza

Chappell, Vere (ed.). Baruch de Spinoza. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992).
Curley, Edwin and Pierre-Franois Moreau (eds.). Spinoza: Issues and Directions.
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990).
Freeman, Eugene and Maurice Mandelbaum (eds.). Spinoza: Essays in
Interpretation. (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1975).
Garrett, Don (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Grene, Marjorie (ed.). Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays. (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday/Anchor Press, 1973).
Grene, Marjorie and Debra Nails (eds.). Spinoza and the Sciences. (Dordrecht:
Reidel, 1986).
Kennington, Richard (ed.). The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. (Washington DC:
Catholic University Press, 1980).
Lloyd, Genevieve (ed.). Spinoza Critical Assessments, 4 Vols. (London: Routledge,
2001).
Shanan, Robert and J.I. Biro (eds.). Spinoza: New Perspectives. (Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1978).